Who We Are
by artemis-nz
Summary: Yuuri learns about grief, and how best to deal with it. Conrad/Yuuri.


When Conrad and Gwendal and Wolfram and the others found the village already burning, bodies strewn about and others left to die like so much garbage, nobody needed to explain to their young King that it was too late.

Yuuri stared, put a hand up to his mouth, swallowed. Then he squared his shoulders. "We need to see to the wounded", he said, and his voice was almost steady.

Healers were called together, and Yuuri himself was soon amongst the survivors, bandaging and applying his own magic as he was able. Conrad went with him, and took care that Yuuri should not see the worst of the injured.

Afterwards, tiring hours later, Yuuri lay in bed perfectly alone and staring up at the ceiling. His body trembled with exhaustion and his eyes itched, but sleep was far away. He felt he could not breathe for the pressure trapped within his chest.

Noises outside his door; a knock so quiet that Yuuri might have imagined it. He sat up, and the door opened. Conrad looked impeccable as usual. Yuuri could only guess at what he himself looked like.

"How are you feeling, Yuuri?"

"I can't sleep."

"I know", said Conrad simply, and it didn't seem strange, was perfectly natural, that Conrad should take off his boots and his jacket and lie down on the bed next to him. Close, but not too close.

"Tell me", he suggested.

"I'm not... it isn't..." Yuuri sighed. Denial never worked with Conrad, and lying was quite impossible. "It hurts", he whispered. "I _hurt_."

"It's alright to hurt, Yuuri. And it's alright to grieve. It's who we are."

"Who we are?"

"That's right. The proof of living. Mother once told me that, after... well. After many things happened."

"Did it work?"

Conrad shifted, sensing a note not present earlier in Yuuri's voice, moving over enough that Yuuri could reach out if he wanted to. "It didn't make the pain any less, but... I suppose it made me feel that hurting like that wasn't a bad thing in itself. That I didn't need to be ashamed of it."

"Had you been? Ashamed, I mean."

"... Yes."

A heavy silence, as Yuuri slowly digested this.

"Conrad?"

"Yes?"

"Did you cry? You know, when..."

"No. Not at first."

"Oh." Another space of quiet where they both simply lay still, thinking. Then, "I can't cry either."

"That's alright as well. Part of grieving is how we choose to express it, I think. That's who we are too."

"Did Lady Celi also say that?"

"No. The first time I went to Earth, I was told that by someone else."

"... Conrad."

"I'm here, Yuuri."

"I _want_ to cry. But for some reason I just can't. It makes me feel so… so _weak_. And a little bad. Like I don't deserve to cry when there's other people out there right now who have actually lost people close to them. I didn't know any of those people – I'd never even seen them before. So it'd be wrong if I-"

"_Yuuri_." Conrad's voice was gently insistent. "Nobody can tell you the right way or the wrong way to grieve. It's your choice, and yours alone. There is nobody in any of the worlds who has the right to make that choice for you."

Perhaps it was Conrad's very gentleness that made Yuuri finally break. A tremor ran its way down his body, and then suddenly the pressure that had been deeply rooted within his chest was making its way up so rapidly that Yuuri had no time to realise what was happening until the tears were already dampening the sheets. Surprised, he opened his mouth to apologise and only a ragged sob came out, and then another. Blindly, his hand groped in the sole direction of comfort it knew, and Conrad was ready.

Yuuri allowed himself to be pulled so that his head was buried in the warmth of Conrad's chest, and by then it was once again too late, far too late, to go back even had he wanted to.

"-sorry, I'm so sorry, Conrad, so sorry!-"

"You have nothing to apologise for."

Yuuri only cried harder, smothering his anguish as Conrad murmured things under his breath, stroking Yuuri's hair and waiting for the tears to pass. The grief, he knew, would take much longer.

He would stay for as long as it took.


End file.
